"Taking inspiration from seafaring and imperialism, and the fact that the music was created within close proximity to the meridian line in Greenwich, the Meridian EP was originally intended to be a project for This Heat. The groups departing member Charles Bullen plays on the opening track, Cutty Sark, named for the famed British clipper ship. The second EP, 1987s Greenfingers, was their final recorded work and, according to Hayward, its possible to hear the group atomizing and preparing to go its separate ways within its grooves. The only This Heat or Camberwell Now recording not to have been produced at Brixtons Cold Storage studios, it was recorded as a DIY exercise and -- unusually for either of the groups -- was not pored over laboriously for a great deal of time. The EP also saw the addition of a new member, Maria Lamburn, primarily on sax, whose Element Unknown was inspired by her experiences in the nuclear protest camp at Greenham Common. Comprising tracks that overlapped between This Heat and Camberwell Now, the EPs concerned themselves with information technology, surveillance, propaganda and what Hayward describes as day-to-day, hand-to-mouth survival -- all pertinent concerns in a fractured Britain under the rule of right-wing Iron Lady Margaret Thatcher, and perhaps still as pertinent today in fractured, recession-hit, isolationist Britain. The group dispersed after a final European tour, amicably, quietly, and differently, the latter their MO throughout a unique career. Goronwy, Hayward and Rickard all share their experiences and thoughts on The Camberwell Now in liner notes accompanying this landmark release: young and old, birth and death captured on two sides of vinyl. Official vinyl re-issue in collaboration with original members. 24 bit/96 kHz re-master from original analog tapes. Restored art, expanded to a gatefold tip-on jacket. Includes download card with two bonus tracks. 8 page booklet with track notes by the artists, lyrics and archival photos." - Modern Classics.

"Camberwell, in South London, pops up infrequently in pop culture. Perhaps you know it from the Camberwell Carrot, the heroically sized joint smoked in cult movie Withnail & I, or perhaps -- if youre attuned to experimental music -- you know of Camberwell Now. The group formed from the ashes of This Heat, the art-noise group whose catalog was reissued on Modern Classics Recordings in early 2016. Not so much a supersession as a continuation of that group, Camberwell Now featured This Heats vocalist / drummer Charles Hayward, who assembled an unusual line-up comprising Stephen Rickard, a former BBC sound engineer, on field recordings and tape manipulation and Trefor Goronwy on bass, vocals and ukulele. We had a very specific set of skills, says Hayward, in new liner notes compiled for this long overdue reissue, and it wasnt immediately clear to us how best to bring them together so that we could play live. Arriving in 1986, The Ghost Trade, the groups sole full-length LP, was what existed at the confluence of live performance and studio experimentation. Similar to This Heats process, the group spent two years in Cold Storage experimenting with the studio and assembling finished songs from vast quantities of tapes. Their two EPs, re-issued as The EP Collection, were borne of a similar process but each with unique yields. The tracks that eventually formed The Ghost Trade were songs forged in the bleak beauty of Thatchers London. To me, the sounds invoked humanity trapped behind and inside a world constructed of glass, steel, and concrete, frozen inside the textures like prisoners of the twilight zone, humanity haunting a landscape it had made for itself, says Hayward. First vinyl re-issue, includes bonus track Daddy Needs A Throne. Official re-issue in collaboration with original members. 24 bit/96 kHz re-master from original analog tapes. Restored art, expanded to a gatefold tip-on jacket. Includes download card, 8 page booklet with track notes by the artists, lyrics and archival photos."

"Double LP version in deluxe Stoughton gatefold "tip-on" jacket; includes download code. "First ever vinyl reissue. 30th anniversary edition expanded to a double LP housed in a deluxe Stoughton gatefold tip-on jacket. 24bit/96kHz remaster from the original tapes. Essay by Sam Sweet interviewing both David and Eric, including unseen archive photos. Includes download card for full album. Youll find a Suicide Bridge in almost any big city you care to visit, but few are more impressive than the Colorado Street Bridge connecting Pasadena to Los Angeles, which earned its nickname by being the scene of suicides in triple figures. Its also the scene of a photo shoot in which singer-songwriters Eric Caboor and David Kauffman posed on the deserted structure, capturing an image that would eventually inform the spare, detached mood -- and title -- of their majestic debut album, 1984s Songs From Suicide Bridge. Indeed, theres a fatalistic quality to this LP that has much to do with its origins. Home-recorded on a four-track, Songs From Suicide Bridge was released on the pairs own Donkey Soul Music in 1984. If this were a movie, the album would have been a huge success. Instead, the 500 copies pressed found their way to few willing ears. Though real life encroached, Caboor and Kaufmann continued to work together, releasing albums as The Drovers in 1989 and 1992. Now, their debut is to be released by Light In The Attic Records with brand new liner notes by Sam Sweet. Hopefully, it will finally find its audience -- a listener who can see hope in the darkness. People would tell us those songs were depressing, Caboor says in his interview with Sweet, but it wasnt depressing to us. In a lot of cases, playing those songs in that little room was one of the only things that made us feel better." - Modern Classics.

Housed in a Stoughton, "tip-on" jacket; First ever vinyl reissue. "Following the reissue of the entire recorded output of South London-based experimental act This Heat and its successor, Camberwell Now, Modern Classics Recordings holds the lens up to a special split album created by one of the driving forces behind those groups - drummer Charles Hayward - in collaboration with Italian musician Gigi Masin, whose looping, rhythmic, electronic compositions have seen his cult following grow in his four decades as a recording artist. Originally released on Belgiums Sub Rosa label in 1989, Les Nouvelles Musiques De Chambre Volume 2 is a split LP on which Masins eight tracks occupy side A and Charles Haywards long-form piece (at 21 minutes long), Thames Water Authority, occupies side B. Geography may have separated the two artists, who each recorded their pieces in isolation from the other, but theres a commonality to their approach. Previously, Masin had released the inspired 1986 album Wind (BAR 003-015LP), while Haywards music had long been influenced by the landscape and society of London and the UK. For this album, the label challenged the two musicians to write about the waterways of their respective cities, Venice and London. For Masin, that meant describing the human interactions related to the Italian citys famous landmarks. Places, faces, memories... thats what most of the people love to find when they travel to Venice - some kind of magic thats deep in the city, he writes in the new liner notes accompanying this new re-release. For Hayward, it meant describing the physicality of water, the densities and energies as he puts it, and the politics of it too. Writes Hayward: Water was being privatized at the time, the profit margin had been factored in, cost-cutting was implicit, people were being poisoned. Water was a political thing; it still is." Dive in. Track notes by Gigi Masin and Charles Hayward; Restored and remastered audio; Features the Masin track Clouds as sampled by To Rococo Rot and Björk." - Modern Classics.

Repressed. "Second pressing of vinyl re-issue. First official vinyl re-issue in collaboration with original band members Charles Bullen and Charles Hayward. 24 bit/96 kHz re-master from original analog tapes. 80 gram wax housed in an expanded gatefold tip-on jacket. Includes booklet with track notes and archival photos. With their debut album and follow-up maxi single Health and Efficiency, This Heat sowed the seeds of post-punk, avant rock, noise rock and post-rock, placing the trio -- Charles Bullen, Charles Hayward and Gareth Williams -- at the forefront of experimental music. However, 1981s Deceit is the one that truly deserves its reputation as a classic of the post-punk era, tying up the myriad threads of their work so far and adding accessibility and melody to the still furiously forward-thinking sound. Recorded in a variety of studios including the bands own Cold Storage, the 11 tracks put a sense of social anxiety and global paranoia to the fore. Some lyrics were “harvested” from TV commercials ("Sleep"), others described the curtain-twitching of surveillance society ("Triumph"), and some were screamed with raw, ragged abandon, like on "Makeshift Swahili". "Makeshift was a big learning situation for me," says Hayward. "I learned to let go with my voice, to release the energy that each song required, no matter where that might lead. The song, about the collapse of language, was central to the Deceit idea." Musical innovations abound too -- drum tracks were recycled from other recordings, albeit in manipulated and mutated form, and "Independence" reverses the melody of earlier track "Fall Of Saigon". Its an album whose themes and sounds unfurl before the listener, the mood of edgy, pre-apocalyptic tension growing throughout. Says Hayward: "I still think of this record as a dream within a dream." This Heat split a year after the release, with Bullen and Hayward completing the final tour without Williams. Hayward went on to form Camberwell Now and Bullen recorded as Lifetones. A tentative 2001 reunion came, tragically, too late -- Williams died of cancer within a month of them meeting to rehearse." - Modern Classics.

"First official vinyl re-issue in collaboration with original band members Charles Bullen and Charles Hayward. 24 bit/96 kHz re-master from original analog tapes. 180 gram wax housed in an expanded gatefold tip-on jacket. Includes booklet with track notes and archival photos. With their self-titled debut, This Heat sowed the seeds of post-punk, avant rock, noise rock and post-rock. The album took the trio -- Charles Bullen, Charles Hayward and Gareth Williams -- two years to create, and placed them at the forefront of experimental music. The follow-up, the 20-minute Health and Efficiency, proved to be a less labored -- and more conventional -- record to make. Bridging the gap between the debut and their masterpiece, Deceit, the 1980 release found the band settling into a groove at their studio, Cold Storage. The eight-minute title track, remembers Charles Hayward, "was improvised pretty much fully-formed," and included the sound of the neighboring schools playground and the band rolling bottles around in the gallery space next to their studio. Thats where they found the maxi-singles sleeve too -- Pete Cobbs blue and white image was on display in the same gallery. As Charles Hayward notes: "Everything seemed to fall into place." On the B-side, the drone for "Graphic/Varispeed" came from the song "24 Track Loop" on the first album, albeit manipulated, slowed down and sped up. "In the process, we realized that we liked the morphing of the sound from one state to another as the vari-speed combed the sound across the equalization, like a microscope. So we recorded the process itself, which is what you hear here," says Hayward. The intention was for the single to be able to be played at 33, 45 or 78 RPM -- which youre welcome to do with this reissue, too." - Modern Classics.

Repressed. "Second pressing of vinyl re-issue.First official vinyl re-issue in collaboration with original band members Charles Bullen and Charles Hayward. 24 bit/96 kHz re-master from original analog tapes. 180 gram wax housed in an expanded gatefold tip-on jacket. Includes booklet with track notes and archival photos. Isnt it so often the case that the most innovative works of art -- the ones that break the ground where others follow -- are the ones that seem to reach only the ears of those who take those ideas and run with them? So it is with This Heat and their eponymous debut album frequently referred to as “blue and yellow” for its ultra-minimal jacket. Within its 48 minute run time, the seeds of post-punk, avant rock, noise rock and post-rock can be found. Formed in Brixton, a multicultural, and -- at the time -- down-at-heel part of south London, This Heat were born into a music scene in rapid flux, first thanks to the punk explosion and then via new wave and its myriad offshoots into pop, rock and art-rock. But while many sought to apply punk attitude to chart-friendly sounds, This Heat were concocting some of the most experimental ideas ever committed to tape, taking influence from musique concrète, krautrock, the burgeoning industrial scene and even the dub reggae blasting out in their home borough. Their debut album had -- for the time and for the DIY scene -- an unusually long gestation, recorded in sessions between February 1976 and September 1978 in a variety of studios including their own Cold Storage, a converted cold storage room in the Acme Studios complex. Innovating throughout, they combined loops and tape manipulation with live performance and haunting vocals to a complex, dissonant whole. The band recorded everything they ever did -- including gigs -- and tracks such as “Water” were entirely improvised in the studio. Given the difficult, abrasive, and involved nature of their sound, This Heat never found anything approaching mainstream success, but patronage by the influential Radio 1 DJ John Peel meant they reached a national audience -- whether that audience was ready for them or not. Celebrating This Heats 40th anniversary in 2016, Modern Classics Recordings will re-issue the bands catalog -- 1979sThis Heat, 1980s Health and Efficiency, and 1981s Deceit -- with full co-operation of surviving members Charles Bullen and Charles Hayward. Four decades on, the tireless efforts of This Heats process can once again be a revelation for new audiences." - Modern Classics.